Work is underway to close the rift in City Council that stretches all the way to West Ashley.
Two weeks ago, City Councilmen Bill Moody and Keith Waring responding to criticism submitted a letter to the Post and Courier that detailed their ongoing concerns with the sluggish pace of revitalization efforts in West Ashley.
The letter hit on five major themes, including a lack of a comprehensive plan for the revitalization, continued focus on peninsular projects over revitalization here, and the failure to form a revitalization task force for the effort.
The last matter was the precipitant event that pushed Moody and Waring to go public with their complaints. They wrote:
“This task force will have an important mission and its work will immediately generate high expectations. West Ashley is no longer Old Charleston’s annexation threshold of the Sixties. Today it is the city’s largest ‘area’ with a population now exceeding 100,000 people. Most are City of Charleston residents.”
Moody and Waring both said this week that the mayor should have had the power to name the task force all along, even though they voted to amend the original ordinance to give each councilmember an appointee on the task force.
That vote, ironically, has further slowed the formation of the task force, and future revitalization efforts.
That amended process has proved too unwieldy, according to Moody, because neither Council nor the mayor nor his staff had outlined what skill the task force needed.
Waring quickly came under fire for his choice, a retired fireman who is the president of a joint neighborhood association. “I made a mistake,” said Waring this week. “But we didn’t know what we needed on the task force.”
Waring said the process had become “parochial,” instead of the needed “broad-based” approach, tapping on skills and experience available locally.
Last week, Tecklenburg had a private sit-down meeting with both Waring and Moody, to clear the air.
Both Moody and Waring emerged saying that they, Council, and the mayor were more on the same page and ready to move forward. Waring and Moody have been pushing for years to keep West Ashley revitalization as a top priority in City Hall.
In response, Mayor Tecklenburg included a line item in the Tuesday, July 19th City Council agenda that asked for a vote as to whether to keep with the amended, wide-open task force formation ordinance, or to allow the mayor more latitude.
Waring and Moody both said they supported handing the matter back to the mayor, but needed more study over the weekend before they called which way they intended to vote.
Josh Martin, senior advisor to Tecklenburg on the built environment, said some of the criticism of “foot dragging” by City Hall on West Ashley revitalization was “warranted.”
But he stressed, the looming effort is an “historic” one, as it will mark the first time the city has tackled a major revitalization effort off of the peninsula. “I think it’s healthy, the discussion and what is everyone is doing to flesh out the process,” said Martin, the former head of planning for the city.
Additionally, Martin said the interest in serving on the task force has been significant. “Whenever an opening on the Planning Commission, or the Board of Zoning Appeals comes up, there’s never this kind of interest,” he said, pointing to the 125 people who asked to be considered for the task force.
Martin stressed that there was no “two Charlestons” planning approach for the city – one for the peninsula and one for the rest of the city, within Tecklenburg’s administration. “The mayor ran for election with it being West Ashley’s time,” he said.
Andres Duany, the esteemed planner who
has been tapped to work on the Lorelei project downtown, Martin said, has been approached by the city to consider weighing in on the West Ashley effort.
Duany perhaps more famous for new developments like his Seaside, Fla. Community that was featured in the movie “The Truman Show,” has since retooled much of his focus to stopping urban sprawl.
Other nationally known planning firms have
been contacted informally, said Martin, who said a “request for plan” could be issued publicly before the end of August.

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